Ed Elder: NRA wasn't complicit in Virginia Tech deaths

Posted: Tuesday, May 15, 2007

The writer of the Wednesday letter headlined "Would NRA donate funds to Virginia Tech memorial?" is uninformed, or he would know Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine moved swiftly to change the state's gun law so that it now bans Virginians undergoing involuntary treatment for mental disorders from buying guns. The existence and closure of such loopholes has been going ad infinitum, and will continue.

Gov. Kaine's timely action disproves the Wednesday writer's contention that "The Virginia laws enabling mentally disturbed people ... to easily buy handguns must meet with the approval of the National Rifle Association." The remark is vile in its falseness and implication the NRA is complicit in the 32 recent gun slayings at Virginia Tech, which any thinking person recognizes as a horrific act committed by a mentally ill young person.

Is the writer implying his First Amendment rights are superior to the Second Amendment? If so, I would agree, because it comes first in the Bill of Rights. Given that reasoning, the importance of the Second Amendment in the minds of the Founding Fathers earned its rank. Why wasn't it No. 10?

Maybe President Bush or his representative should visit each family and explain his rationale for the more than 3,000 U.S. combat deaths in Iraq. Representatives from the airline, auto, coal, medical, drug and other industries that might be culpable in unnecessary deaths should visit victims' families in tragic times.